


The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals

by hangingfire



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Missing Scene, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-23 16:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17083529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hangingfire/pseuds/hangingfire
Summary: "He needed to get away from the camp. To breathe, he said. Hickey said he could breathe just as well there as anywhere else, but Harry had just stared him down in silence until Hickey shouted for Tozer, who is now behind him a short distance away, rifle on shoulder. Harry sits on the ground, eyes on the horizon, looking for—what?"





	The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [potted_music](https://archiveofourown.org/users/potted_music/gifts).



It's been a week since what Harry Goodsir has come to call in his own mind _the schism_. They don't let him wander alone. Hickey doesn't want him to escape, obviously, but in truth, even if he did try to run he'd have no idea where to go. He isn't a navigator under the best of circumstances, and out here, one stretch of stony ground interrupted by the occasional boulder looks very much like another.

He needed to get away from the camp. To breathe, he said. Hickey said he could breathe just as well there as anywhere else, but Harry had just stared him down in silence until Hickey shouted for Tozer, who is now behind him a short distance away, rifle on shoulder. Harry sits on the ground, eyes on the horizon, looking for—what? Rescue? The creature? Sil—

He hears the crunching of footfalls on the rocks well before the shadow of Cornelius Hickey falls across him. He doesn't turn.

"Penny for your thoughts, Mr. Goodsir."

Harry doesn't answer, but that doesn't stop Hickey from sitting down next to him, almost companionably. Harry imagines seizing the heaviest rock near to hand and bringing it crashing down on the man's head.

"I know you don't like me, Mr. Goodsir, and I don't expect you to. But I do think you need to understand—I'm your best hope now for living."

Harry looks at him narrowly, out the side of his eyes. "Are you."

"That's right. You see our party? Smaller. Quicker. We can cover more ground in a day than Mr. Crozier can cover in a week. We don't have the dead weight he's hauling about either. And I'm the one in our merry band with the wit and the will to do what needs to be done. You see?" He claps Harry on the shoulder and Harry can't help but flinch. Which Hickey seems to take as an invitation to simply drape his arm over Harry's shoulders as if they were the best of friends. Harry wishes he could shrink himself. Or that he had something sharp, for he is now perfectly placed to—

"You stick with me, Mr. Goodsir, and who knows? Maybe you'll be back in England within the year. You can publish your Esqui dictionary—don't look so surprised, we all knew. Maybe you can go back out with the Discovery Service to somewhere warmer, eh? Plenty of time to discover new things, make a name for yourself—I know you're an ambitious man, Mr. Goodsir, for all your kindness—"

"You are perceptive, Mr. Hickey."

Hickey shrugs, gives him a look of false modesty.

"Then perhaps you may perceive that this largely one-sided conversation is at an end."

"Ah, Mr. Goodsir, Mr. Goodsir. Whatever are we to do with you?" He's chuckling, but then in a flash the arm is off his shoulders and Hickey's hand is tight on the back of his neck. "What's so bad about survival, Mr. Goodsir? Come now. You're a man of science. Don't all living things try to survive?"

"Yes," Harry says quietly, outwardly calm even as he's inwardly struggling with the urge to strike Hickey. "From the most minuscule paramecium to the largest whale, every living being has an instinct to survive. To seek water when thirsty, food when hungry, shelter when in danger."

"And a man's no different, Mr. Goodsir. We've got that instinct too." He pulls Harry around so that they're practically nose to nose, and somehow every syllable of what he says sounds like a threat. "Only we're smart enough to do it _right_. Cunning enough to see the right way out, not just go after the first little outcropping or puddle we see. Hm? Am I right?"

"Almost," Harry says, and suddenly he smiles, a little mad, a little angry. "And we have a conscience, Mr. Hickey. Compassion. Justice. Without which we are only a brighter sort of ape."

Hickey's lip curls in disgust and with a sudden, violent gesture, he thrusts Harry away, sending him sprawling on the rocks. "You believe in some lovely fairy tales, Mr. Goodsir," he says. "Let me know if they keep your belly full. Speaking of which, you ought to come back to camp now. Can't have our surgeon wasting away."

Harry wipes his hand with the back of his mouth; it comes away bloody. Bit his lip, perhaps, or cut it on the rocks. "Go," he says to Hickey. "I'll follow. You've my word."

For a moment Harry thinks Hickey is about to grab him by the ear like a recalcitrant schoolboy and haul him off, but instead the man shrugs and saunters away, whistling. Tozer watches him go, starts to follow. Then turns back to Harry. "You all right, Dr. Goodsir?"

Harry gets to his feet, wincing. He's been aching and sore a little more every day. "Fine, Sergeant, entirely fine. Let's go back. Our leader is waiting." He takes some small satisfaction in seeing Tozer flinch ever so slightly at that.

They trudge back, Harry trailing slightly. He stops, glances back over his shoulder. Thinks he sees, for just a moment, a human figure in the distance watching them—a woman in caribou fur, dragging a sledge behind her. But he blinks, and the vision is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> A moment with the man we love to hate and the man we love to adore, forever opposed. Devised as a chaser of sorts to [_Letters Found in a Medicine Chest_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17054456). I can't say that it's much happier overall, but it does have 100% less on-screen death.
> 
> The title is from _Hamlet_ , II, 2.


End file.
